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loginA couple of years ago, a good riding friend of mine moved from here in San Diego to San Antonio, TX for work. He dearly misses the riding here, so two weeks ago he rode out from Central Texas to get his California road fix.
A mutual friend of ours and I were to meet him in Park City, Utah and the three of us would enjoy a couple of days of riding on our way back to the West Coast.
From San Diego to Park City, our plan was to leave after work on wednesday evening and grind out way up the freeway to Las Vegas (about five hours), then get on the road at the crack of dawn to beat the heat (projected to hit about 110f (43c).
Well, my friend Seth had some family entanglements and so we didn't actually leave San Diego until 8:30 at night. Which was fine, really. It just meant we'd get a couple of hours less sleep.
Well, tooling along the freeway about an hour later, my iPhone fell out of the holder on my handlebar. The holder that had gripped my phone securely for over a thousand miles of dirt roads in Canada, held it for any number of rough roads here in the US and Mexico, held the phone without fail despite a hard low side... well, it simply let go on a smooth chunk of freeway. At 9:30 at night. In the fast lane.
I tried to signal Seth, but he didn't see my lights flash and just kept riding even as I pulled over almost immediately. I walked back on the left shoulder (that's the fast lane side) and looked for it in the fast lane or on the shoulder by the oncoming traffic headlights, but despite ten minutes search just couldn't find it. It was in one of those otter box 'Life Proof" cases, so if it didn't get run over it would be OK despite the fall.
Well, I couldn't find it, so I imagined it must have made its way into the weeds next to the road.
I jumped back on my bike and looked for Seth, who I figured would have pulled over once he realized my headlights weren't behind him. I didn't see him for a few exits, so I pulled off and found a mini mart. I explained that I'd lost my phone and asked to use the phone there, and the guy behind the counter helpfully lent me their land line to call my wife- who of course, didn't answer an unknown number at 10;00 at night. I left a voice message explaining what had happened and asked her to call Seth and tell him I'd meet him in Baker, CA, a couple of hours down the road.
I chose Baker because the whole town is no more than five blocks long, and so there is no way we could miss each other there.
At 11;00 I used the phone in another mini mart to call my wife again, and this time she answered. She told me that she'd gotten ahold of Seth, and he went back to where the phone had gotten lost and was using the "find phone" app to locate it, but would meet me in Baker.
Well, he never found it, despite wandering up and down the shoulder of the freeway with a flashlight for over half an hour. He quit when he noticed that the last ping my phone had sent was 54 minutes old- clearly the phone had actually been destroyed and the location info was simply old news.
What with all of his heroic efforts, I had a long wait in Baker. The pic is of my bike at 3 AM in a small town in the Mojave desert.
Baker is famous for two things. The first being the southern gateway to the Death Valley National Park, and the second is the world's tallest thermometer (which read 96f at the time).
